Down the Nile on the Superstar

Born and raised in San Antonio, Pickett Porterfield is an aspiring writer and avid wanderer. He has lived in Mexico and has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America. For more tales from the travel trail, check out his previous blog, Southeast Asian Dispatches

LUXOR, Egypt  Well, I’ve managed to get way behind here, but we’ve got an hour or so to kill before catching a bus, so I’ll try my best to hurry and catch up.

Last Saturday we set out on a two-day/two-night cruise down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor aboard a felucca (a traditional Egyptian sailboat). As I mentioned in the last posting, we’d made arrangements for this trip with a certain Captain Abdula two days before while on a sunset cruise with him around the islands of Aswan. Back on shore that evening, he assured us over a couple of beers that he would be our captain and that he’d take care of all the preparations. We agreed to meet at noon on Saturday and embark on the trip with six other passengers he’d already contracted with.

Forgetting, perhaps, that Egyptians tend to do business a bit differently than Westerners, we were quite chagrined when we got to the docks at noon Saturday only to be told by a man we’d never seen before that Captain Abdula and his first-mate, Captain Bob Marley, would not in fact be part of our crew. We instantly became suspicious of the new arrangement, and considered backing out of the whole thing. But after about an hour of cross-examining and debating and talking to Abdula via our substitute captain’s cell phone, we grudgingly agreed to go ahead with the voyage. Although things got off to a rocky start, we ended up having a great time.

In reality, a felucca trip down the Nile is about as authentic an adventure as a roller-coaster ride at Disney World, but there is something about sailing this river that transcends time and sparks the imagination. There’s really nothing to do on a felucca but recline on the foam mattresses that cover the flat deck, sip a cold beer, and reflect on the bucolic scenery slowly passing by. The lapping of the water against the bow, the slapping of rigging and sail in the wind, the peaceful lack of any engine noise and vibration  it all makes for a very tranquil experience.

An acrobatic felucca captain mends a sail.

The prevailing winds blow upstream, so even though we were sailing with the river’s current, we tacked into the breeze the entire way, lazily zig-zagging from bank to bank. Like everywhere we’ve been along the Nile, the shore was lush with date palm groves and small fields of crops tended by sunburned farmers, always in the shadow of the Sahara’s creeping sand dunes.

Our captain, a skinny Nubian named Hussein, spent most of the trip manning the helm of our boat, the Superstar, and barking gruff orders in Arabic at Said, his sleepy cook and dubious first mate. Several times, when Said was caught catching a quick cat nap in his tiny galley in the boat’s bow, Hussein shook his head and joked with us in his raspy voice, “Said lazy! Lazy like Japanese tourist!” He’d then poke Said in the ribs with his toe, bellowing at him like a drill sergeant at reveille.

When he wasn’t busy dozing or sneaking furtive glances at the girls on board, Said spent most of his time crouched over a portable gas stove on the floor of his cramped cooking space. I’m not sure that hygiene was a word familiar to Said, but nonetheless, he cheerfully prepared simple and surprisingly tasty meals for us with nothing more than a bent butcher knife, a rusty saucepan, and a boiling pot at his disposal.

Our sleepy cook, Said, washing dishes after lunch.

The second afternoon of sailing, Captain Hussein tied the rudder in position with a piece of rope and excused himself to the tiny crawlspace below deck. A few minutes later he emerged with a huge warped joint between his lips and repaired to his spot in the boat’s stern, trailing a thick cloud of pungent smoke. After he’d burned through two more blunts and talked us out of a cold Stella from our dwindling supply in the ice chest, I began to wonder if he was still fit to navigate our craft through the stream of zig-zagging feluccas and the occasional smoke-belching cruise ship we shared the river with. But true to what he’d told us, he was a professional, and, buzzed or not, he continued to perform competently at his post.

We didn’t actually sail all the way down to Luxor. Between tacking into the wind and mooring at a small village Sunday afternoon so Said could catch a taxi back to Aswan to buy more beer, we only managed to cover about 25 miles of river in two days of sailing. Monday morning we got up early and parted ways with Captain Hussein and Said. The other passengers  four Ecuadorans and a French Canadian couple  were on a package tour they’d purchased in advance and had to get to Luxor that afternoon. Since Julianna and I had contracted directly with Captain Hussein, he asked if we wanted to sail back to Aswan with Said and him. It was a tempting offer, but we decided instead to head on to Luxor with the others.

The dawn of another day on the Nile.

We all climbed in the back of a pickup truck that Hussein had arranged to take us to the village of Kom Ombo, and bounced along rutted dirt roads past stray cattle and farmers riding wooden donkey carts. In Kom Ombo we transferred to a crowded minivan for the two-hour ride to Luxor. This part of Egypt experienced a period of sectarian violence back in the 1990s, much of which was aimed at foreign tourists. As an asinine leftover precaution from those days, tourists still are required to travel in convoys escorted by truckloads of well-armed police. Every half hour or so we’d stop at a highway check-point manned by dozing police officers with AK-47s resting in their laps. We joked along the way that there seemed no better way to make tourists vulnerable than by herding them into large groups of vehicles that depart at scheduled times each day.

Well, as much as I’d like to blather on, we have a bus to catch. I’ll try to catch up this evening with a run-down of our last couple of days here in Luxor.